Carl Alasko: How to lose weight

Dear Dr. Alasko: My spouse and I have been steadily gaining weight and we've both decided we really need to lose at least 30 pounds. We've tried different diets and lose a few pounds, then gain them again. Do you know about any really effective plan? And we don't want to join any commercial program.

Dear Reader: The problem of weight gain, especially at middle age, is found in your brain. To permanently lose weight you must find a way to intercept the constant flow of powerful impulses (both immediate and historical) that demand rich food, and lots of it, now!

In other words, you need to short-circuit your self-indulgence around food.

Two very powerful energies run the "food show": denial and delusion. They combine with habituation, which is the slow acceptance of a bad situation as normal. A 40-inch waist? "That's just me." As though you were born with it.

While it's a fact that excess weight damages health, and makes movement more difficult, we "deny" those facts. They just don't exist. We make a thousand exceptions in our case. Talk to someone who's markedly overweight and you'll hear a complex recitation of denial, interwoven with delusional versions of reality.

So losing weight and keeping it off requires a massive offensive against your mind's arsenal of denial and delusion — and how you've habituated to being fat.

Here's my method. Assess your desire to lose 30 pounds on a scale from 1 to 10. Your life is at 10.

Where is your career? A 6 or 7? Your marriage?

And how important is losing 30 pounds? If it's anything less than an 9, forget it. Because to really lose weight and keep it off, you need to install a permanent Level Nine Alarm into your thinking.

You need to be utterly convinced that getting back to a healthy weight is a life-and-death issue. Because you will need to think about losing weight constantly. All day long, for at least a year. You can't relax a moment. Especially before bed. You can't allow yourself to justify any violations. Your delusional powers will tell you: "Oh, this won't matter! It's just a cookie!" Or, "I've been so disciplined ... just this once. And it's your birthday." Denial and delusion will launch a tag-team effort to twist your resolve into a pretzel that gets stomped on the way to the refrigerator.

When you get invited to a party at a friend's house and you see the potato chips, the ribs dripping fat, the icy beer, the creamy, sugary desserts, your Level Nine Alarm needs to scream: "Those 4,000 calories will kill you!"

The good news: after about six months, your self-discipline will be less stressful.

Losing weight is a serious issue that critically degrades everyone's life. It demands the highest level of dedication for success — on a par with saving your life.

Carl Alasko, a licensed marriage and family therapist, is the author of "Emotional BS" and "Beyond Blame." For information about his books, see: carlalasko.com. Contact him at dralasko@gmail.com.